Saturday, July 18, 2015

Bhopal Notes - 6: A new eatery and cheap Chinese electronics

It has been open for some time and seem to have become pretty popular. I
am talking of Chi Kitchen – an outlet at the DB Mall for what they call
Pan-Asian food. It is a full-fledged restaurant unlike the food stalls of the
food court on the third floor and one can have sit-down lunches and dinners
inside its pretty well done-up interiors.

Our entire family visited last Sunday and found some of the dishes
pretty good. The South-East Asian prawn ensemble was pretty good as was the
dish of fish crispies. On an earlier occasion I had found the Thai Yellow prawn
curry eminentyly edible with rice. Like in Thailand, they have three colours in
curries – red, yellow and green. The green is not supposed to be hot, the
yellow one is mildly hot and the red one is like fire. For those who are not
the fire eating type the yellow one with a little tempered heat should do and
the green one perhaps will be more likeable for those who give a wide berth to
chillies. The food on offer is generally good but not the kind about which one
could write home.

Chi
Kitchen, nonetheless, fills a long-existent gap - the absence of authentic
South-East Asian food. Randezvous, a good outfit on the first floor of the
stores by the side of Ravi Shankar Nagar Post office was inexplicably wound up
far too soon. We had very good South-East Asian curries, especially prawn
curries there on many an occasion. Though the Rice Bowl is also around, but Chi
Kitchen is located in the very centrally located DB Mall that now is a haunt
for most of young and old of the city.

*******

In the Hyper City, while browsing through the
spread that was on offer in the electronic section, I came across a pair of
head phones made by Intex at an incredibly low price of only Rs. 200/-. Some of
the reputed brands sell their head phones for thousands of rupees. Of course, much
depends on the degree of sophistication in the unit. This one was a simple,
matter-of-fact headphone with the only sophistication of having a button for
volume control. Intex is an up-‘n’-coming Indian electronic firm selling a wide
range of electronic products that are far cheaper than those of the established
brands. One guesses, it currently is competing with Micromax which has become
pretty big – so much so that it even sponsored a whole international cricket
matches series.

The only snag, however, is that the products of
both, Intex and Micromax are manufactured in China and that is how these are remarkably
cheap without compromising on quality. The product designing is done in India
but, apparently, we do not have the wherewithal to manufacture them at low
cost. This is precisely why China is now known as the “factory of the world”.
Every firm desirous of finding a stable place in the world market gets its
products manufactured in China, whether it is Japanese cameras or touristy
ceramic curios for the US markets or electrical kitchen appliances of our own
Bajaj Electricals. All this happens because of the incredibly depressed labour
costs.

But, the Intex headphones set me wondering how
they could sell them so cheap. There must have been some production cost, then
the cost to move it after payment of local taxes, if any. There also would have
been a handler for its export who would have incurred some shipment costs. At
this end there had to be an importer who diverted the product to a dealer to be
sent to a retailer. There must

Intex headphone

have been hordes of men and institutions
involved who had their respective cuts and yet the product is so cheap. So how
much would it cost in China? May be Rs.30 or Rs.40 ? Long ago (it now seems so)
before the advent of smart phones we used to buy basic Nokia cell phones for
Rs.1300 or 1400/-. An acquaintance who had been to China around that time told
us that such phones were available there for Rs.80 to Rs. 100/-.

That is why one wonders whether Modi’s “Make in
India” would ever be successful. Our products, with our kind of labour laws and
tax regime would hardly be able to compete with Chinese products under the
current dispensations of the World Trade Organisation. We could perhaps produce
goods to meet the domestic demand but in international markets Chinese would hammer
us out unless, of course, something extraordinary happens and China loses steam
or Indian labour and tax laws are drastically changed.

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About Me

There would seem to be no point in talking about the position I used to hold. What is more relevant today is that I am retired from the service of government of India where I worked for thirty four years in senior positions ending just below the top of my department. I retired more than twenty years ago. To be fruitfully engaged I took to blogging and writing articles, initially, on local issues but now for years I have been writing on topical and environmental matters. The writings in the local supplement of a national daily gave me some kind of a positive identity in the town which culminated in my being nominated to be a founder member of Bhopal Citizens' Forum, a powerful pressure group. I am , I think, fruitfully engaged and I have no complaints against life.